Interview with Bill Condon

Kinship with Kinsey

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

New York-born Bill Condon began his career as a film
journalist, which led to his first film-writing job, on a low-budget horror
film called Strange Behavior (1981). For
almost two decades Condon continued in the horror and suspense vein, turning
director in 1987 with Sister, Sister.
In 1998, he very cleverly broke away by making a biopic about a horror
director. Gods and Monsters
placed at #2 on my own ten best list, while the National Board of Review chose
it as the year's best film. It also won Condon an Oscar for Best Screenplay
Adaptation. The success of that film allowed Condon to break out and try other
projects, such as adapting Chicago
for the big screen, as well as his most current project, a biopic about
infamous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. During a recent visit to San Francisco,
Condon revealed that he began working on Kinsey in 1999, not long after winning his Oscar. "I
had my first meeting on Chicago
and now the DVD is in the remainder bin, all during this. That's how long it
took," he says.

Combustible Celluloid: Lynn Redgrave, who was so good in Gods and Monsters plays a key
scene here. Just one small scene that vindicates everything Kinsey does over
the course of the film.

Bill Condon: I was so happy when she agreed to it, which didn't happen
quickly. I had dinner with her and said, 'it's not a big part.' And as I was
leaving, I just slid in the fact that it's on page 118. Of course, she went
home and read only that scene. And she said, 'it's too small.' And I said, 'just
read the whole script and you'll understand that it actually sums up the whole
movie.' And she did that and then she agreed to do it. That whole idea, 'you
saved my life, sir.' That's something that's become more and more clear to me,
not only when I was doing the research, but now on this tour. This is not like
any other movie tour I've ever done, where you kind of get typical questions;
'what was Liam Neeson like?' This is like new discussions all the time. I got
to be on a panel with contemporary sex researchers and the new head of the
Kinsey Institute whom I've never met before. And you realize that so many of
these things are life and death issues. They're doing a study of condom use,
and you would be amazed. There's like a small but significant percentage of the
American population that puts on condoms after sex. It's incredible! The amount
of ignorance that's still out there!

CC: It's rare in a biopic -- which demands a showy centerpiece
performance -- to have such good performances by supporting actors.

BC: Kinsey is such an odd central character. One way I keep
thinking about it is that American movies always flatter the audience into
thinking that they're the smartest person in the room. So even if you're
watching a movie about a villain, there are always these foils, these people
who look stupid compared to him. Whereas Kinsey, while he's brilliant, he's so missing the point. He's the butt of the joke. He's
not in on the joke. And that's a weird person to put at the center of a movie.
You can really grow impatient with him. Which is why Laura Linney's character
is the way in. You need someone humanizing him and helping you see him in a
different way. It's also why I think Liam pulled off something incredibly hard,
that people don't even see. That character on paper puts me to sleep. But
there's something about Liam's qualities, that temporal thing. He has three
lecture scenes, these long swaths of information. Liam, who's working so hard
to do the American accent, inevitably there's a lilt that he's suppressing but
is still there. But he makes it sound pleasing.

I've been a big fan of his from the films, but the stage
work -- The Crucible and Anna
Christie -- he was so amazing on so many
levels in a way that I hadn't seen as much on film. In general this is a cast
with a strong theatrical background. The way that that pays off, is a little
residual James Whale, I think. He had a very ripe style in everything and Lynn
was able to capture that and keep it real in Gods and Monsters. Maybe it's the gauging or something. But you take
the Lithgow character. That is a guy who is so extreme, and you couldn't write
it that way if it weren't true. He's so one-dimensional; he's just horrible. An
actor who had just been in movies would have been desperately searching for the
moments that humanize him. But Lithgow, and all the actors, took him in this
different direction, a theater actor's direction, which is just to heighten it
a little. It's going to be the most awful thing you've ever seen, and it's
going to be slightly ridiculous, without undercutting the reality of it. It's
my favorite kind of acting and I don't think you see enough of it in movies.

CC: This didn't occur to me until much later, but I had a good
laugh over Tim Curry as the repressed, puritan sex teacher.

BC: Yeah! Dr. Frankenfurter. I also think of Dylan Baker, with
his Happiness baggage: "You don't
want to get into anything too abnormal."

CC: Here's something you said six years ago when we talked about
Gods and Monsters: "I really
think the biopic thing so rarely works because people's lives don't have the
dramatic shape that can be satisfying. It does take some kind of bold
idea."

BC: Which in that case was Whale's ailment and the structure
from the novel, which took just a moment. I assumed, going into this, I was
going to find that same moment with Kinsey.
There's one scene, when he becomes famous, he's hanging out in New York. And
there's a lunch he has with Joseph Campbell, Ian Forster and Forster's
policeman boyfriend. That's a great opening scene for a play. And I kept trying
to find, what is the moment in his life? And I couldn't do it. It didn't feel
like it was the right approach.

CC: I was wondering if a director of horror films, who might
be more in touch with the human condition and the human body, might be more
qualified to make a film about sex and sex education?

BC: There's some truth to that. This movie was a challenge to
approach visually, because it is the ultimate talking heads movie because of
the interview format. When I was able to open it up, it was things like
intercutting between Kinsey losing his funding and Laura going up the stairs to
see what's on the other side of that door. That's a pure horror movie scene.
Those techniques always seem like the purest way to tell a story.

Richard Sherman, the production designer, had this idea of
squares, like in a graph. That became one way to approach it visually. There
are an awful lot of squares. As the project develops, it becomes more and more
dominant. In the scene with the pedophile, you go into the hotel and it's all
squares in the windows and we put up this room divider behind him. And then
there are squares behind him. So it's like this attempt to get people into
boxes. When the project falls apart, at the low point, it's all circles. With Gods
and Monsters, it was clear that this was a
Sirk movie and Whale's 30s expressionist style doesn't belong in this color,
widescreen movie. And this one took longer to invent.

CC: Do you ever look to James Whale for inspiration or,
"career advice"?

BC: When I was starting out and I was writing, I spent a couple
years writing for Tony Richardson (Tom Jones). Liam Neeson is his son-in-law,
though they never met. And Lynn was his sister-in-law, so I've always circled
around this family. But I do think that it's interesting. I really love the
city of Los Angeles -- the city part, not the movie part. I've lived there over
half my life. I'm in a good moment now. It's not easy, but I'm getting to make
the movies I want to make. And that will inevitably pass, as it does for
everybody. But I do often wonderŠ What is it like on the other side of that and
what's it like to linger in that city once that happens? I definitely do feel a
connection.